Facebook Ad Price Hikes Will Cause the Stock to Surge: Barclays

Facebook Inc.’s (FB) advertising muscle is so strong that it should be able to hike prices to combat a slump in the number of marketing campaigns that appear across its website and apps, according to Barclays.

In a research note, Barclays senior internet analyst Ross Sandler said higher innovation, including big machine learning investments, can help Facebook to raise prices and grab more market share, regardless of industry wide trends, much like Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOGL) Google has done over the past decade. The analyst also argued that the social network has yet to reap the full advertising potential of its Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger apps.

"Facebook is the best pure play in consumer internet around mobile advertising, and continues to take a large share of mobile advertising budgets," Sandler wrote on Tuesday, according to CNBC. "Google was able to increase price at a healthy clip for over a decade, so we think Facebook is in a good position to do the same.”

Facebook has registered declining ad impressions over the past three quarters. That slowdown has fuelled concerns on Wall Street that the company’s glory days might be over, particularly as it generates most of its revenues from advertising.

"Facebook's holy grail is finding a way to unlock value in its abundance of upper-funnel impressions, and getting its 6 million+ advertisers to pay slightly more for each of those impressions," explained Sandler. "Products like custom audiences and retargeting are helpful to identify users more granularly than what was occurring before these products launched." (See also: Facebook Ex-Employee Says Lawmakers Should Regulate It.)

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